Special session — Assessing student learning of engineering design

Abstract

Design is a central aspect of engineering and engineering education, but is challenging to teach and even more challenging to assess. In this special session participants co-construct an understanding of design and what aspects of design should be (and can be) assessed. Additionally, the special session will review the instrument development process (including the process of validating instruments) and will provide examples of existing instruments for assessing learners' understanding of design. These instruments measure a variety of topics and concepts related to design, have been designed for many different audiences and have been developed for different purposes. This session will equip educators with tools that are useful for assessing and promoting students' understanding of design. Additionally, this session may benefit educators and researchers interested in adopting or adapting design assessments for use with K-12 populations.

Engineering Economics as a General Education Course to Expand Quantitative and Financial Literacy

“…There has also been a study focused on underrepresented students (i.e., females, minorities) with regards to their graduation rates, grade point averages, and changes in major across multiple universities 10 . There have also been studies on specific courses or content (e.g., engineering design) [11][12] .…”

The Integration of Stakeholder Requirements within Aerospace Engineering Design Education

“…Aerospace engineering students' understanding of design, stakeholders, and the operational context of an aerospace vehicle are being assessed throughout their senior year through the use of conceptions of design ranking test and problem formulation tasks based on a submarine design scenario 57 . Since students have different levels of prior understanding about traditional aerospace vehicle design, the researchers chose not to use an aircraft design scenario to gain an unbiased understanding of students' general perceptions of important disciplines in a design project and design requirements.…”

ECE/SYS Integration: A Strategy for Evaluating Graduates from a Multi-year Curriculum focused on Technology Systems Integration

“…Several researchers have worked to make VPA less time intensive (shorter activities, "live" coding of data, etc.). One noteworthy example shows multiple design timelines from three-hour VPA activities to students as a way to provoke student reflection on their own design processes 31 .…”

“…Human-Centered Design Task Developed by Oakes, Cardella and others 31 , the Human-Centered Design Task has participants "complete a table of information needed and a timeline for a proposed process for completing a design task" 31 . The task requires only thirty minutes for participants to complete.…”

“…Most of these approaches reviewed in this section are presented in more depth by Cardella, et al 31 .…”